The Times: Excavations reveal the past of ancient Albanian city

For decades the ancient city of Butrint lay visible, but unvisitable on the southernmost coast of Albania. Even Albanians had to get an internal visa to reach the site, on a lakeside peninsula close to the Greek border.

Now archaeologists have plumbed its waterlogged depths and recovered evidence from when Bouthroton was founded more than 2,700 years ago, as a Greek colony of the Corinthians. “Butrint owes a priceless debt to Virgil, who in the Aeneid had his exiled hero from Troy, Aeneas, pause here on the way to found Rome. At a stroke, Butrint was on the world map,” Richard Hodges, who has overseen the transformation of Albania’s first Unesco World Heritage site, said.